It Begins:

We all know YouTube. It’s only the most popular web platform for video content. However, what is a video hosting platform without videos? The very heart and soul of YouTube are the very creators who choose to post content online for others to view. But of course, why put all your time and effort into something for free? While the platform does have ways for you to generate some level of income such as the advertisements that play on your videos, what if you just wanted, just a little more moolah?

Enter YouTube Sponsorships: Some companies made the rudimentary connection that if a famous person on YouTube were to promote their product online through their videos, then naturally that would result in a great boost in attention and therefore revenue. I’m not going to go into more specifics than that, if you’ve been on YouTube for any amount of time, then you’re more than likely already aware of the many sponsorships that seem to appear all over the platform, even in places you wouldn’t expect. Obviously people came to the documentary detailing the spiraling descent into madness one of the world’s most infamous serial killers to hear about the hit new mobile RPG “Raid: Shadow Legends”, which brings console-level graphics to your mobile phone, as well as-

I’ve seen my fair share of sponsorships in my time. I feel like I keep seeing the same ones over and over again, which got me thinking; just how do they decide what videos to slap their sponsorships into? And with such a seemingly simple question, my descent into madness was set into motion…


The Methodology:

Naturally, as one of the privileged few to be considered a “University Student”, there were all sorts of apparatus available to make my investigation. So I opened a Google Form and jotted down every sponsorship I would see while watching YouTube.

Of course, just a count of how many times each sponsorship cropped up on its own isn’t worth anything, so I recorded a couple extra things as well:

This is when each observation was recorded.

This is what each category the video belonged to. Unfortunately, YouTube videos do not have the decency to outright state what kind of video they are, so I had to employ the highly scientific method of guessing and rolling with it.

This is the length of the video. This also double checks as a way to avoid duplicate observations.

This is how many subscribers the video uploader has when making the observation. Of course, this isn’t a super reliable measurement, it changes all the time, but might be useful in making broad observations.

I’m starting to get the feeling I don’t need to explain these.

The main observation that’s being made.


Now, all I have to do is go gather the data, how hard could it be?

What could possibly go wrong?
What could possibly go wrong?


Data Gathering Time:

This sucks. I am not having a good time.

Maybe the sheer number of sponsorships is significantly lower than it used to be. Maybe the people I tended to watch are mostly people who create videos for the love of the artform and thus choose not to take sponsors as they would feel that it would constrict their creativity. Maybe many people have decided that having alternative sites where viewers could instead go to in order to support their work was more lucrative and thus superseded the need for sponsorships. Whatever the reason is, I AM THE ONE WHO SUFFERS FOR IT.

I’ve attempted to gather data for this during two distinct periods, roughly a month apart. Both times, I set myself a deadline of a few days to find 20ish observations for analysis. Both times I’ve had to scramble through video after video from creator after creator that I just would not naturally bring myself to watch just to find sponsorships. One thing I wanted to see in particular was Honey, the “coupon-finding” extension that secretly screwed over countless people while frequently not even achieving the one thing it was meant to do. Naturally I expected to find fewer instances of it over time as news broke over their shady practices, but I wasn’t expecting videos that I knew had a Honey sponsor in it to retroactively axe the entire segment and remove all traces of it from the video.

I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m in over my head…


The Initial “Analysis”:

The Bar Chart of Sponsors by Count Can I even call this an analysis? Frankly, what insights am I supposed to garner from this? It’s all over the place, a bit hard to make any judgements when most of theme have values of one. This wouldn’t really be an issue if I had more data, BUT I CAN’T FIND IT. There’s a single clear standout, that being HelloFresh / Factor, except of course they’re ahead, they’re the only one that is grouped together since both belong to the same company, but that’s still a bit unfair if you think about it.

I guess we can group some of these up to even the playing field…


There is Power in a Union

The Bar Chart of Sponsors by Count, Grouped by Similar Types Now we’re getting somewhere(?). In lieu of getting more data so that a proper analysis can be performed, I’ve opted to smoosh together somewhat related categories together. This isn’t a perfect solution, since all the categories sans VPN are pretty arbitrary, but it’s the best I’ve got. The two most commonly seen types of sponsorships are Food Delivery and Video Games, which makes sense. The most common categories of videos I watched (that had sponsors in them at least) were gaming videos and documentaries and video essays about games. And what gamers want are more games to play and more time to play games by circumventing the need to avoid/reduce cooking. So far, the sponsorship patterns seem pretty normal.


Does Length Actually Matter?

Box and Whiskers Video Length by Sponsor Type, Separated by Video Category
Box and Whiskers Video Length by Sponsor Type, Separated by Video Category

Now we’re really seeing the ramifications of my inability to find sponsorships in YouTube videos. It’s just a little sad, isn’t it? Only a single instance each for Reaction and Tutorial / Educational videos, resulting in the single dimensional square (it’s just a line). Reviews are hardly better, the few squares in it are in dire need of eating anything besides ice soup. Thus leaving Documentary / Video Essay and Gaming as the only two categories worth looking at. Even then, there’s still too little to make any honest assessments about any potential sponsorship patterns based on video length. However, I’m a little surprised by how close together in length the documentaries and video essays are that have Food Delivery sponsorships. I don’t really have any insight about this, it’s probably a coincidence.


I’m not the Same Person as I was a Month Ago (it’s gotten worse help me)

Box and Whiskers for Upload Date by Sponsor Type, Separated by Survey Period
Box and Whiskers for Upload Date by Sponsor Type, Separated by Survey Period

This last one isn’t really part of sponsorship pattern analysis, but more of a personal analysis. What kind of videos am I, the layman (awaiting credible source) more likely to watch that has sponsors in it? One of the benefits of sponsorships over conventional advertisement is that once the contract period ends, the sponsorship is still shown to people who come back to the video (unless the sponsor is forcibly removed, isn’t that right, Honey?). As I mentioned earlier, there were two periods in which data was gathered, one around the start of April and the other a little into May, labelled 1 and 2 respectively. Naturally, the same issue persists where it’s hard to make specific inferences, but we can see that in both periods, I found sponsors in videos from four years ago (can you believe that Covid was five years ago?). Even though a majority of sponsors came from the past year or two, the concept that sponsorships from nearly a half decade ago are still being shown to people. I suppose it’s no wonder why a lot of companies have decided to sponsor videos on YouTube with the potential of reaping benefits decades down the line.


Conclusion:

uh

In conclusion, I need more data in order to make a conclusion.

What else am I supposed to say? Other than the anguish I put myself through on this, I’ve got not a lot to show for it. The most I can say is that the most common sponsors I ran into were for video games and meal delivery services, which are products that I would expect people in a similar position to myself to want. But that’s about it, there just isn’t enough data to make any inferences. It’s a bit deflating to do all of this and come out of it with a non-conclusion.

I think I had more fun making memes…


Here’s a couple videos I like that don’t have sponsors in them and thus had no relevance to this project:

Aussie Man Yells at Bad “Technology”

Raccoon Eating Grapes

The Only Good Political Candidate


























Cat Shelter

I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the cats, so I’ve brought them down here. Anybody willing to adopt? My apartment doesn’t allow pets.

A black and white cat dancing A tabby cat dancing Five kittens head banging